


heave my heart into my mouth, take count of all my bones

by gendzl



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst with a Happy Ending, DADT Repeal, Declarations Of Love, HIV/AIDS Crisis, M/M, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Relationship Negotiation, and I like to warn for it because I know some people are sensitive to the subject, but it is a contributor to a character's fear-based internalized homophobia, especially in fandom spaces, historially accurate but entirely canon noncompliant, that last isn't a huge plot point, the period being the mid-90s to the early 2010s, which means that I rewrote their personal histories but I also provide topical book recommendations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendzl/pseuds/gendzl
Summary: Steve and Danny spend the better part of two decades trying (and failing, and trying again) to figure out how to balance loving each other with the harsher realities of life.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 48
Kudos: 57





	1. May-October, 1994

**Author's Note:**

> First fic for this fandom, ayyyyyy! 
> 
> As is my wont, I have bent canon to my will by completely making up Steve and Danny's personal histories, ages, and timelines. Grace and company don't exist, and I offer no alternative explanation for how, when, or why Danny ended up on the island if Grace wasn't the impetus. Welcome to Chaos City, population: Me. 
> 
> The first half of my title is from King Lear, the second half is from Psalm 22, and both lines have been gleefully removed from all context.
> 
> A mini DADT timeline —
> 
>   * December 21, 1993: Clinton issues the DADT directive.
>   * [insert many years of political bullshit here]
>   * December 22, 2010: Obama signs the DADT repeal
>   * September 20, 2011: The repeal actually goes into effect, allowing LGB members of the U.S. armed forces to serve openly.
> 


Before Steve, Danny hadn't known attraction to men from a hole in the ground.

It turned out to be the spasm behind his lungs when he wakes up in bed, falling and yet still atop his mattress.

It was the rush everyone said love would be, could be, should be, covered over with a layer of the absolute terror that was reality. The dreadful realization of "Oh, I'll never be able to _have_ this."

Loving Steve was inevitable. Unavoidable. Exceptional, startling, painful, unspeakable.

It was 1994. AIDS had officially become the leading cause of death for young Americans.

He was in love with a man for the first time in his life, and he was terrified of losing him without ever having him, and he didn't know where to put it all. He didn't know how to be like this. How to live like this. (He'd known about it. Of course he'd known about it. But it was never supposed to be a personal worry he would deal with, one that he'd carry the weight of in his own chest, and now the fear of it was choking him.)

That autumn, his fears doubled themselves like yeasted dough: Steve was twenty years old and had just signed the next eight years of his life over to the Navy.

It would be longer than that, he knew it; Steve was never going to leave after the first enlistment. Not with the kind of bone-deep, self-sacrificing martyr complex he embodied.

Steve knew what he was getting into. What he was giving up. Clinton had issued the Don't Ask, Don't Tell directive in December of '93, and it had been all over the news. He knew, and he was willing to clamber back into the closet for this. Willing to say, "Not now, not yet, maybe not ever."

Danny didn't get it. Not yet. He was eighteen and still unsure where he wanted to be come spring, except with him (with him, always with him). In the one place he couldn't be, and didn't dare put himself. Nearest the hand he'd never been brave enough to reach for, which was now far out of grasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The AIDS crisis only makes an appearance in this chapter, but I'm still going to plug a few prominent titles on the subject, because it's important for us gays to know our history: Randy Shilts' _And the Band Played On_ as well as David France's _How to Survive a Plague_.


	2. Friday, November 1, 2010

Their third bottle of wine is nearly gone when Danny finally can’t take it anymore. He swirls the liquid around in his glass and asks, "How is he?"

The question sobers the room.

"He’s…good. Actually, he—" Chin looks to Catherine—for permission of sorts, it seems, because she nods once and he glances back at Danny. He looks slightly sheepish, and clears his throat again before speaking. "He’s in town right now. On leave."

"Oh! Well, good for him. Army, right?" he asks, knowing full well that that Steve is in the Navy.

"Navy." This from Kono, who knows he knows. "Just like Cath, Danny, don't be petty."

He looks around the room at them. Danny suspects that they feel caught in the middle, like children after a messy divorce; never mind that they were never together, not really. There are no sides for them to choose from. If they're caught in the middle of anything, it's all of them together between a rock and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Danny downs the dregs of his wine before saying (a bit to the left of nonchalance), "Well, somebody call and invite him over." He stands and heads for the kitchen; he thinks there’s an emergency bottle of shit wine in the back of the fridge. Besides, after dropping that bomb, they’ll need a moment to discuss.

Sure enough, whispers break out as soon as he rounds the corner. He retrieves the wine (Barefoot Moscato, $6 and a twist-off cap; his drink of choice in college) and lets the fridge fall shut again, plunging the room back into semi-darkness. He waits, eyes drifting closed and ears perked.

The shuffling, hissed sounds in the other room reach some sort of conclusion only a minute later and he steps back in, waggling the bottle as though in victory.

Catherine looks almost mutinous, arms crossed over her chest and gaze directed at a spot on the far wall.

Kono is staring at Chin, who’s got his phone pressed to his ear. "Steve?" He meets Danny’s eyes from across the table. "Danny just invited you to Whine Night."

Because he’s disgustingly considerate even when he shouldn’t be, Steve shows up on Danny’s porch 20 minutes later armed with two wine-sized bottles of Danny’s favorite beer. Catherine plucks one right out of his hands and moseys back into the house with it, uncapping it against the door frame as she goes and leaving stray bits of wax behind on the white paint. Danny hears her mutter something about ‘emotional damages’ as she pushes past him but ignores her in favor of eyeing Steve up.

He looks good. His hair is cropped shorter than Danny’s ever seen it, and the dark brown is shot through with a few strands of silver (Danny aches a bit, at that), but his eyes are the same even hue they’ve always been, and Steve is looking at him the same way he always has. The crow's feet are new, and the cargo shorts of old have been replaced with a pair of jeans that cling to Steve's thighs in a way that's clearly intended to taunt Danny, specifically.

It's not like he's been pining after him for a decade and a half or anything, but.

Danny thinks for the fifth time that night of the headline he’d seen a few weeks prior, and tries not to let his feelings show on his face. He doesn’t think he succeeds.

"Danny."

"Steve." He steps to one side and lets him in.

It’s Kono who brings it up first, because she walks through life with a spoon in her pocket to stir shit up, and somebody has to talk about the pink elephant in the room. "How about this DADT thing, huh?"

Danny, a few drinks deeper by now, startles visibly.

Chin chokes. Kono leans around Catherine to look at him in concern, and settles back against the couch when he waves her off, eyes watering.

Steve merely sets his pint glass down on the coffee table with a gentle _clink_. "It could be interesting, if the Senate decides to pass anything." His expression is unreadable, his tone bland and noncommittal. Danny mourns the loss of familiarity, the ability to see through Steve's mask. How long has it been since they were last in the same room? The same hemisphere, even?

Kono smirks, eyes darting between the two of them. Danny briefly wonders why they keep inviting her to these things.

"Well," Danny says, voice brittle, "we’ll find out eventually, I guess."

The rest of the group leaves less than an hour later, filing out one by one. Chin gives Danny a fortifying hug before he goes, and murmurs something in Steve’s ear that makes him smile.

Steve shuts the door behind them and returns to the living room to find Danny already cleaning up. He joins him wordlessly and they fall into an old and familiar rhythm, dusting off muscle memory that has them moving in lockstep.

"Are we ever going to talk about it?" Steve asks.

Danny looks over at him and something inside him cracks. "I’m not sure if I can, not until we know for sure that it’s going to happen. I couldn’t—" he breaks off, not entirely certain how he was going to end that sentence. Couldn't get his hopes up like that? Couldn't have him only to lose him again when the floor fell through yet again? Couldn't break his own heart on an outcome no one could guarantee?

Steve nods his understanding and sets the dishes he’d collected on the counter. He leans in and presses a light kiss to Danny’s temple, and then he leaves.

Danny remains standing in the kitchen for a long time after that, staring numbly at the dim reflection of himself in the window above the sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The headline Danny had seen and couldn't stop thinking about? _Senate Halts 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal,_ which CNN published on September 22, 2010 and which you can read [here](http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/21/senate.defense.bill/index.html) if you want to get nostalgically angry at some Republicans.
> 
> For most of 2010, it was kind of up in the air as to whether or not something would come along and successfully throw a wrench in the repeal. Two separate bills passed the House—the National Defense Authorization Act in May (responsible for the military's annual budget, and containing an amendment that would allow for the eventual repeal of DADT, given that certain conditions were met) and a standalone bill on policy in December—and there were two (2) filibusters before the Senate finally shut their yaps and passed anything DADT-related. The [wiki summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Ask,_Don%27t_Tell_Repeal_Act_of_2010#Legislative_history) is as angering as it is illuminating, if you'd like to give that a gander as well.


	3. August-December 21, 2010

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've kind-of-but-not-really backtracked a little bit in the timeline so as to get some coverage of Steve's emotional state. I don't think it counts, since nothing happens on any specific dates, but you might wanna make a mental note anyway. Whine Night happens somewhere in the middle of this wee chapter.

It's uncomfortable, having to watch while military and government officials, news reporters, and Americans far and wide discuss Don't Ask, Don't Tell at length while he, someone who's actually impacted by it, essentially finds himself bound and gagged in a corner. They debate not only his right to love openly, but oftentimes his very humanity as well. It's infuriating, occasionally more so than DADT itself.

The conversation ramps up as the fight is finally brought to the Senate, and the casually (but firmly) enforced silence starts grating on him more than ever before. By the second week of December, he's stress-running so much that he's lost 6 pounds he couldn't really afford to lose and has to start telling people that he's training for a marathon.

At some point, he actually decides to train for a marathon. Why the hell not.

Steve isn't even sure what he would say if given the opportunity. If he was approached for a quote under condition of anonymity. How do you sum up a lifetime of being closeted, of putting everything else (family, country, all of the meaningful and meaningless bullshit that makes up the concept of duty) before the thing—the person—that mattered most? How do you gather the courage to say "I've loved him longer than I've known what that meant" after more than sixteen years of doing everything you could to keep it locked up tight?

He doesn't go looking for a place to speak out. He's afraid that if he says anything, even once, he'll never be able to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Steve _had_ gone looking, he'd certainly have found someone willing to listen. Josh Seefried is the editor of a moving collection of essays by U.S. military personnel called _Our Time_ , which was published about a month after DADT ended. The Marine Corps University Press put out _The End of Don't Ask Don't Tell_ , containing personal essays as well as official reports, in April of 2012.


	4. Wednesday, December 22, 2010

When his phone rings on December 22nd, Danny has already been sitting on his living room couch staring at it for the better part of an hour. He lets it vibrate a few inches across the coffee table before answering, anyway, so as not to appear too eager.

"Steve?" He's calm. So calm. Totally, completely calm.

"It's not actually—it doesn't—I mean, it _is_ , but we can't—" Steve stops, huffs at himself, and starts again. "Hi."

Danny rests his head on the back of the couch and stares sightlessly at the place where his ceiling has started bowing inward slightly. He makes no effort to suppress the smile on his face. He is oozing tranquility. "Hello, Steven."

"Obama signed the repeal."

Cool, composed, unruffled. Serene, even. "I saw."

"The wheels of progress turn slowly in the military," Steve says.

What? "Huh?"

"I mean, it's not official yet. Nobody can come out or anything." _I_ can't come out, he doesn't say. He's in his own home, calling from his cell phone, but he still won't (can't) say it. Danny's chest aches in a way that has grown all too familiar over the years.

"Yeah, I know." He lets Steve stew in the silence of dead air between them for a moment before he adds, hopefully, gearing up to a leap not even of faith but of sheer stupidity and, like, the strength of fragile superstition (preparing to abandon all pretense of _calm_ ), "But you know, those of us who've thrown our lot in with a Navy man have all sorts of patience. I'm sure we won't mind waiting another few months or so for the military to get its shit together."

He can practically feel Steve's smirk creeping across his face. "Oh, so you've thrown your lot in, have you?"

And then he says it. "Steve, you know perfectly well that I've been in love with you since 1994."

If ever a silence has sounded shocked, it's this one. It rings out equally loud on both ends of the line.

Talking around it was one thing. Implications, mild flirtation, the dipping in of toes—testing that the waters were still warm—and veiled interrogations of their mutual friends. Synonyms. Idioms. They'd spent all these years like that, circling each other and this thing in between; the most hesitant of vultures.

Neither of them had ever just _said it._

They sit in silence for a few lingering moments, listening to the silent sound of repercussions: with Danny's words, they can no longer remain stagnant. Now what?

The two of them sit tied together by a phone line, each on their respective couches, both of them waiting with bated breath for the second shoe to drop.

Knowing their luck, it'll be a steel-toed boot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "it's not official yet. Nobody can come out or anything." I sometimes wonder if anyone missed that memo and thought they were a-okay to come out after this and it worries me. I'm a worrier.


	5. Saturday, July 23, 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This date has no particular significance, except that it's a solid seven months after Obama's signature on the bill, with another two months still to go before DADT's actual repeal. Long enough to feel like you're literally gonna die before the date arrives, haha.

Waiting seems a lot more doable on the front end of something than when you're actually in the middle of it. And all of the "hurry up and wait" Steve has done as a Navy SEAL hadn't prepared him for this kind of waiting. This is a whole new level of awful.

It doesn't help that Steve isn't sure what to do with himself, for once in his life. He's even started _fidgeting_. Outside on-duty hours, he can hardly distract himself from the constant background hum _of it's ending, it's ending, it's almost over._

But it's not over yet, and he can't do anything to hasten things along, and he still can't talk to anyone about it. There are plenty of dickbags in the military, some of whom continue to discharge people for their sexuality despite the fact that there's an official end date for DADT on the books.

It's maddening. He's stressed.

He tries to resist the impulse to make down-to-the-minute plans that he can implement the moment his life is truly, wholly his own; the moment they can finally _do_ something about the seventeen years he and Danny have sitting between them. Something more than talking and veiled insinuations from an ocean apart. It's difficult.

 _Seventeen years._ Christ. The amount of pussyfooting and equivocation it took to get them here is almost terrifying in retrospect. He'd probably have gone right on with it, too, up until the very moment it was finally "safe", if Danny hadn't shoved them through that particular doorway. Steve's not generally someone who can get the words out of his mouth, not for things like this.

In fact, if he's being honest with himself, the surety that he wouldn't get kicked out of the Navy anymore just for being gay probably still wouldn't have been enough to kick his ass in gear and get him to make a move on Danny.

Danny hasn't always been the braver of the two of them, emotionally speaking. At least some of these years spent apart were necessary for both of them; they had traded off on being scared of different things, valuing different things, working toward different goals, and healing different wounds. Steve had chosen the guarantees of country and duty over the risks (and, unfortunately, also the benefits) of pursuing a relationship. Danny had spent a solid two years in therapy figuring out how to reconcile his love for a man with the homophobic mindset he'd been raised in.

Not to mention that Steve at twenty and Danny at eighteen probably would have just flat out killed each other. If they _hadn't_ killed each other, the relationship would at the very least have imploded fantastically before ever getting off the ground. They simply weren't ready, not then. It was a fact of life, and one they were still getting used to.

They were in love, but love hadn't always been enough. They'd had a lot of—as much as Steve resents the implications of the word— _maturing_ to do before anything they could have built together would ever stand a chance at surviving the things life, their personalities, and the military could throw at them. (He hopes they're ready for it now. He thinks they are, but o'dark thirty likes to take his doubts and magnify them until they're all he can see.)

They've starting to open up to each other in a way that would have terrified him a decade ago. He and Danny are writing emails on top of dorky handwritten letters and playing phone tag across time zones. All of the years have stopped feeling like a wedge between them, or an ever-widening and insurmountable chasm. It's a history. It might not be the best history, but it's _theirs_.

Steve thinks that perhaps they've finally arrived. Nobody's chasing anybody, or running away from anything. They're on the same page, at the same time, for the _first_ time, and it's as frightening and humbling as it is exhilarating.

Even so, making plans at this juncture feels a little too much like tempting fate. No matter how stable things seem, Steve can't quite bring himself to trust it. Not Danny—no, Danny he's sure of. He's always been sure of Danny, in one sense or another, even when he felt stupid for doing so. No. The thing he doesn't trust is the military's ability to follow through and let him have this, finally.

(Of course, none of this actually stops him from making plans. He is who he is.)

Steve has spent his entire career in the Navy serving under DADT. He doesn't think he'll believe it's really over and done with until something really drastic happens to them, probably in public. Something or some moment that allows him to say "here is the definitive split between Before and After." Sure, _After_ means he'll have Danny, but he still wants something tangible to point at.

He briefly considers what it would take to get his hands on one of Obama's bill-signing pens, but he reins himself in on that one right quick. Some things are just a bit excessive.

...Seventeen-years-excessive.

Maybe he'll propose. That's normal, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve "all or nothing" McGarrett, everybody.


	6. Tuesday, September 20, 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Props to @rhysiana for talking me through my endearment panic.

If things had been perfect, Steve would have been at home the day the repeal went into effect.

(If things had been perfect, it never would have taken them seventeen years to get here.)

However, Steve isn't due back on the island until sometime in the middle of January, and so Danny spends the day of the repeal celebrating with enough alcohol to get sentimental about certain things.

More than enough alcohol to get sentimental. In fact, he passed that a while back and was hurtling full-tilt toward saccharine moping by the time the phone rang.

"H'lo?"

"Danny?"

"Steeeeve!" Danny rolls over onto his stomach and rests his head in one hand. Being the Navy and all, you'd think they'd be able to do a better job at keeping a phone line from sounding like a bowl of Rice Krispies.

"Wha—Danny, are you drunk?"

"Very, very drunk, babe," he says, as soberly as he can manage, which isn't all that sober. "Completely plastered. Room's spinnin' an' everything." He burps. "Might puke later."

Steve sounds a bit strangled when he says, "That's lovely." He can't decipher the tone in his fabulously drunken state. Possibly he is disgusted by the mention of puke? No, that makes no sense. The man's a SEAL. A little puke is nothing.

Ugh, he has to stop thinking about puke before he makes himself puke.

"Sorry," he says, belatedly. Realizing that he's let himself get far drunker than he probably should have on a Tuesday night, Danny hauls himself vertical and heads for the kitchen. The kitchen is where the water lives. "How are you?"

"I'm alright, buddy." Oh no. _Buddy_. If Steve were here right now, he'd have that soft look on his face he keeps trying to pretend doesn't exist. He'd press his knee against one of Danny's and act like it was just a coincidence. (Sometimes, Steve is so emotionally repressed that Danny wants to pile on the praise just to see what happens.) "Hey, do you remember that conversation we had a while back?"

Danny squints at his faucet while he thinks. "Which one?" They've had a lot of conversations recently. It's been nice.

"I've enjoyed them, too," Steve says, and he's definitely smiling now, Danny can hear it, and—oh, shit, how many of his thoughts has he been saying out loud?

"Just that last one, I think," comes Steve's voice in his ear, reassuringly.

Oh, well, that's good.

"Danny."

"Hmm?"

"Do you remember the conversation we had? About the repeal?"

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Get Discharged for No Damn Reason," he says studiously. "Dickbags." He has more where that came from. Bastards. Fucking tyrannical, homophobic politicians. Clinton can go pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt.

"Yeah, that one. You're still up for it, right? This whole—" he pauses for a second and Danny mentally fills in one of his own flail-y hand gestures to compensate "— _us_ …thing?"

He nods his head so hard it jostles his brain, the bit of it that's supposedly in control of movement having forgotten that Steve can't actually see him. "Yes. For sure. Certain. I am very totally on board for this 'us' thing. The moment you come home, I'm gonna jump your bones and then keep you in my bed for a week to make sure it sticks."

Steve actually _snorts_. "Glad to hear it. Have you given any thought to—" Danny's doorbell rings, cutting him off.

"Ugh, fuck. Hold that thought, some dingbat thinks eleven is a reasonable time to ring someone's doorbell." He looks down between the glass he's holding in one hand (he still hasn't filled it) and the phone he's got in the other. After a brief moment of deliberation, he sets the glass down. "You're coming with me. In case you need to call the cops. Can you call the cops from there? Don't they connect you locally? How does that work? Where the hell are you, even?"

He asks this last as he opens the door to find Steve on his front steps, grinning like a loon with his duffel at his feet.

"Oh no," Danny says morosely. "How dare you show up when I'm too drunk to fuck you."


	7. Chapter 7

There's an adjustment period. How could there not be?

Showing up on Danny's doorstep with three weeks of leave and no warning had the natural side effect of having to reacquaint themselves to each other very, very quickly.

Steve can't eat like a normal person to save his life; he genuinely thinks that protein bars are an enjoyable breakfast. It's disgusting.

Danny takes off his socks _after_ he's in bed, and they wind up shoved way down at the bottom where a taller man's toes might brush up against them in the middle of the night and create a mild sense of panic, not knowing what they are. (Danny also doesn't close the cap on his toothpaste.)

Steve has to take several deep breaths when he opens the door to Danny's garage by accident while looking for the linen closet (hospital corners) and discovers that the man he loves has a small-to-middling case of packrat-itis, never having gotten rid of anything winter-related after his move from New Jersey. ("What if I need some of it someday?!" "Danny, you have three sets of downhill skis, and you live in Hawaii.")

But it's good. Really, really good. They make up for lost time—loudly, enthusiastically, and a lot—after some hesitant missteps and awkward false starts. They lose sleep as much to conversation as to the rest of it.

They laugh a lot. They cry some.

They are reminded why they fell for each other in the first place.

Several months later, when Steve reports back in after another visit home with a spring in his step and the name Williams neatly embroidered on his uniform, his superiors can't say a goddamned word about it.


End file.
